


By My Side, In This Ever After

by flipflop_diva



Category: Maleficent (2014)
Genre: Gen, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 21:16:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2826350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes happily ever afters don't last. But sometimes fairy godmothers stick around until then to help you through it. A look at Aurora and Maleficent through the years post-movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By My Side, In This Ever After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [muffin_song](https://archiveofourown.org/users/muffin_song/gifts).



_“I don’t know anything about how to be queen.”_

_“You know everything there is to know, dear. And I’ll be here the entire time.”_

•••

As it was in many lands, peace reigned for some time after King Stephan’s death. Aurora was a fair queen, a patient queen, and the love between her and Phillip grew and extended, and the villagers loved them both for it. They were praised and adored, and people were content. 

Now that she had her wings back, Maleficent had some unfinished business to attend to. She went back into the Moors, to find the people she had once left behind, but she never strayed far. She was always just a whisper away if Aurora needed anything at all, but everything was calm and content.

Aurora and Phillip were married on her eighteenth birthday, and the villagers turned out, every single one, to celebrate. Maleficent watched it all from the front row, her smile broad and bright (and a few villagers would later swear they saw some tears). The celebration lasted for four days and five nights, and there were parties and balls and food for everyone, and people were happy.

During her twenty-fourth year, Aurora gave birth to her own daughter, a little girl she and Phillip lovingly named Sophia. Maleficent was made her godmother because Aurora didn’t want anyone else to raise and protect her child except for the woman who had loved and protected and saved her.

And so time went on, Aurora and Phillip and Baby Sophia and Maleficent and days grew into weeks, which turned into months and spread into years, and everyone was happy and at peace and times were good.

Until they weren’t.

Because life is not a fairytale and dark times always fall and peace cannot last, and in March of Aurora’s thirty-second year, it finally came to a head. 

There was a new creature in the Moors. A fairy, but most unlike any fairy they had seen before. His wings were black and so was his outfit, and the few times Aurora had the occasion to witness him, when she was out showing Sophia the places she’d played as she grew, she could feel herself tremble when he glanced in her direction, his eyes seeming to radiate something she did not understand.

She tried, on each occasion, to call out to him. — “Hello!” She would call. “Please don’t leave!” — but he never did more than stare at her and Sophia in such a way that she drew her child next to her in a instinctive protective brace as he disappeared back into the woods.

Aurora never mentioned these sightings to anyone else, not to Phillip and not to Maleficent. She did not feel she needed to, because she was not worried.

But then the tidings grew worse. Parts of the forest became sick. First just a tree here and a flower there and a small well over yonder that dried up, but then more and more and soon almost half the forest was withering away and the creatures were angry and scared, and their concern was breeching into the village, and fear and anxiety started to grow.

And then came the sightings, from villagers in every home — tales of an evil fairy waiting for them, stealing from them, cursing them. And the villagers grew even more fearful and they demanded answers until the night Aurora just barely managed to stop them from burning the forest to the ground.

“We will figure this out!” she yelled. “I promise you are all safe!”

“He cursed my family!” someone shouted back. “If something happens to them, it’s on you!”

And the yell and roar that rose from the crowd was angry and unsoothable, and Aurora watched with sad eyes until they retreated, and then she turned and entered the forest, keeping an eye out but the dark fairy was no where to be seen. Instead she made her way to a familiar nook in the river, and then she called out: “I know you’re here! Please come. I can’t do this alone!”

And a few seconds later, a rustle of wings was heard and then there she stood, shimmering and beautiful, beside her. Aurora let herself be comforted in the arms of the woman who knew her, and loved her, like no other and then she pulled back so Maleficent could see her face as she told her the story and about everything that was happening.

“I want to help them,” Aurora said when she was done, “but I do not know how. I will only disappoint them.”

Maleficent placed a slim finger on Aurora’s hair, pushed a lock of golden hair behind her ear. “You will never disappoint them, my dear.”

“I will if I cannot help them, and I fear that I cannot. I do not know how to handle situations such as these.”

“Yes, you do,” Maleficent answered. “You handle them as you handle everything. You are wise beyond your years, and the answers are inside you. Just believe in yourself.”

“And you will help me?”

“Of course I will.”

“First, we must figure out who this fairy is,” Aurora said. “And then we must talk to him. There must be something we can do without fighting.”

And so Aurora turned and headed into the forest, and Maleficent went with her because she knew a thing or twelve about woodland creatures who felt out of place. And the dark fairy heard through the whispers of the trees that they were coming and when they entered the area of the Moors that had withered and faded and lost all signs of life, there he stood, waiting for them, his expression the same one that had sent shivers through Aurora’s heart during those other few sightings.

But this time she was not scared. This time she stepped forward, because Maleficent was by her side, and she knew she could do this.

•••

_“I still don’t know anything about how to be queen.”_

_“You know everything there is to know, dear. And I’m still here.”_


End file.
